Forum:Character Infoboxes and More
So as I'm patrolling the wiki I'm finding that people are using a whole bunch of different infoboxes when the original guidelines had one particular infobox and boilerplate to use for profiles. That infobox is locked, for now, and can't be edited. Beyond that, portable infoboxes on this site appear absolutely hideous and hard to read with white text on yellow, it would be groovy if folks refrained from using those for now and used the actual standard infobox, the one found here, in the guidelines Ideally, we'll probably want to make a new, portable infobox eventually, and transition over to it, but with looking at all of these unsanctioned infoboxes I'm seeing a lot of other information that isn't included in the official infobox. Precisely what actually belongs in an infobox? Please discuss: If we're going to set up a new template, what information actually belongs there and what information is superfluous? What, precisely, is an infobox of each type for. Furthermore: Are we going to be using US English or UK English. Do we really want a template that says "colour" instead of "color?"--Zandrae (talk) 23:58, November 2, 2016 (UTC) ---- The infoboxes are now editable and can be cleaned up and modernized. I think that the official page layout and original infobox should remain similar to the original style and that aforementioned style should be mimicked in future infoboxes. The original style is Title Bar, Image, Section Title, Information. The purpose of an infobox, in my opinion, is to provide a quick at a glance view vital information. The purpose of an infobox is to not completely replace the need for actual article content with every little detail. To be crude, an infobox should be like a miniskirt, long enough to cover everything important but short enough to keep interest. This is the same as a RP profile tooltip: It has stuff you absolutely need to know, and if you choose, you can read the rest of the content.--Zandrae (talk) 04:47, November 5, 2016 (UTC) ---- I see that the Template: Individual infobox I'm currently using is a candidate for deletion. Seeing how you feel the length of information it holds is too much, I wanted to compromise with this template: Template:Test infobox Please give me feed back on the template. I personally like the layout of it and works quite nicely without being too overbearing with information.--Oogaman (talk) 08:56, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- With the exception of "Aliases" that is virtually the same as the test version and that can be added. Both the current implementation and the test version also worry me because they're huge. The proposed box you've posted, it's pretty huge. The text portion of it almost takes up an entire window, which is 3/4 of my monitor. The more people have to scroll the less likely they are to keep reading unless there's something that grabs them. The blurb above the first header on the boilerplate is intended to help people give a quick and dirty summary of their character. I've got an idea on how to compress things but we really need to think critically and scrutinize the thing. Which pieces of information do you absolutely need to know to RP with someone if you're TL;DR when it comes to reading their full page. What can be inferred and doesn't need to be spelled out. What's nice to know but not all that vital if you're going to be doing walkups with the person? Put a number beside each of these in order of the things you most want to know when looking at a character. alias= title= race= gender= age= height= weight= birthplace= residence= guild= affiliations= alignment= faction= class= What is vital or and what is not quite so vital. (Zan forgot to sign this earlier like an idiot.)--Zandrae (Talk) 02:20, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- alias=2 title= 1 race=4 gender=5 age=7 height= weight= birthplace=3 residence= guild= affiliations=8 alignment=9 faction= class=6 First I'd like to start by saying that the "text" for the infobox is only as big as the amount of info (affiliations, titles, nicksnames etc.) they have. The one presented in the test is only that big due to the shear amount of RP I've done with him for the last 7 years. If you don't have that much info on a character, it would appear smaller. I put a number from what should come up first in the infoboxes (1= top, 9= bottom). I think faction you can tell by the little icon next to the name so that would be redundant and unnecessary to have. Plus, if you you want you can just stick it in the "affiliations" box. Guild could also go under affiliations. Height and weight is very trivial and isn't really needed. Alias I feel is important because there are a lot of people who's character go by a certain alias instead of their actual name. Residence is optional for me as I personally don't think it's very vital. All the ones numbered I feel are pretty vital. --Oogaman (talk) 10:30, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- To me, the stuff regarding what someone looks like at a glance is pretty handy because it gives a picture of what they look like. Someone who is tall, lithe, and young gives a very different impression than someone who is short, chubby, and old. Gender is usually obvious by looking at the picture unless it's really androgynous custom art. The other stuff isn't obvious from, say, a screenshot. By contrast, I'd question why where someone was born is more important than where someone lives now. You'd think in terms of interaction, that stuff that's happening now is more important at a glance than stuff that could have happened fifteen to several thousand years ago. I think part of the problem might be the length of the image, too, though the sample of the current template has that same issue. I wonder if there's a way to enforce a max height so we don't get images that are over ninethousand miles long. I'd like to know what other people think If they could copy the empty code, and paste it below, and fill it out down there, that'd be groovy.--Zandrae (Talk) 14:49, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- From what I see here, we have two completely separate ideas of what's important and what's not. We might need to hear from other people and see what they have to say to find a compromise between our differing ideas. Anyways, I think that height and weight, even though someone might RP to be fatter or taller than most, that discription can be expained in physical discription. Why I think birthplace is more important that residence is because where a character is from defines who that character is and what their history was like. Residence can always chance and dosent really add much context to who they are as most people seem to either live in a capital city or just be nomadic. I know you have a problem with the size of my infobox which i personally think is a tad bit ridiculous at this point considering I took a lot off the template I was using and now has literally all the same tabs as the one you're using. Just because there is a bit more content in mine doesn't make it too big. I like to set up my articles with a lot of information, but have it look clean. I don't like making it look barren with one or two words per tab. I know everyone has their own idea of what an infobox should look like, but all I'm asking is to try and meet me half way. I agree, the best way to settle this is for other to voice their opinion on the matter.--Oogaman (talk) 20:42, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- We are standardizing infoboxes across the wiki. This is not debatable. For the record, here's my list: alias=(Shouldn't this be name?) title= Also best in a bio. race=1 gender=9 age=8 height=4 weight=5 birthplace= This is best in the history section. There one can also elaborate on what about the region was so crucial to the formation of the person's character and personality. residence=6 knowing where to find someone at a glance helps facilitate roleplay guild=7 affiliations= Also best in a bio or under the Trivia or an Affiliations heading. alignment=10 The alignment concept is borrowed from D&D and probably should be shown through content on the page and roleplay, not in a box. faction=3 class=2 The infoboxes are meant to contain statistics and information that is best listed in one to two words. The rest should go in content. We have too many articles where there is nothing but an information box and that is something we are aiming to avoid. RiaSunhammer (talk) 21:11, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- I understand your reasoning on shortening the infobox and I agree that there is a problem with articles having all of their content in infoboxes, but I feel like not including titles and affiliations is a bit too restrictive. I still dont understand the arguement how height and weight is somehow more important while titles and affiliations aren't. Especially for myself being in the navy reserves, titles and affiliations aren't taken lightly. Standardizing the wiki is very much needed if we're going to breathe life into it, but I think it should be something everyone agrees with. Anyways, I know since you two are admins, you are going to do whatever you want regardless of what I think so Im just going to leave my personal opinion here and you do whatever you want. --Oogaman (talk) 22:18, November 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- If you look at the current Template:Infobox character you will note that it has an Affiliation and Title field. Here is what it looks like. I believe we have reached a middle ground here, as we're working on the foundation of the wiki and a lot of back end stuff. RiaSunhammer (talk) 02:15, November 8, 2016 (UTC) ---- I never said anything about getting rid of the fields. I'm concerned about the ordering of the data. If people stop reading the farther down the page they go, we want to have whatever is most important on top. That's a design thing. It's a web design thing. It's also a newspaper design thing. You put your best stories top and front with the biggest headers and then work your way down to other stuff, because if you don't grab people you won't grab people. The draft update looks like this. After spending hours trying to get tabber to parse into boxes, or tab-view, or to collapse rows but it doesn't work with horizontal for the sake of squishing the six tiny fields together. I seem to be getting deeply into pushing the limits of the wiki and its extensions. This isn't my first wiki rodeo, I ran a RP campaign for 8 years prior to WOW and had an extensive wiki for our home-brew world.--Zandrae (Talk) 02:32, November 8, 2016 (UTC) ---- I very much appreciate you guys meeting me half way. I'll begin updating my pages with the new template as soon as I have working internet and not forced to type on my phone.--Oogaman (talk) 05:51, November 8, 2016 (UTC) ---- Just an update for everyone following this that we are finishing the Archiving process and will be moving to the deletion of the non-standard infoboxes soon. RiaSunhammer (talk) 18:57, November 16, 2016 (UTC) ---- December 6th update: We're purging the infoboxes marked for deletion today. RiaSunhammer (talk) 01:34, December 7, 2016 (UTC) ---- Hi there, I'm a transfer from Moon Guard and used their wiki extensively. I'm of the opinion that the current character infoboxes are a tad too restrictive. I would personally prefer the option to choose my row titles and their content. To limit the amount of information in the box, you can simply impose a maximum number of fields. Feloirus (talk) 05:10, May 5, 2017 (UTC) ---- Hey Oogaman! Do you mind if I add you to my Bnet friends list? There are some things I want to speak to you about! Lore-ax Narisawa (talk) 07:52, May 12, 2017 (UTC) ---- In regards to the infoboxes be at glance tools, I can understand that. However offering more flexibility would not, IMO, support the box being the only piece of content on one's page. Having the option to -choose- what each row will entail allows the content creator the freedom of dictating what they view as most important for their character. Onto a much more petty subject...PLEASE ALLOW ME TO EXPAND IMAGE WIDTHS IN THE INFOBOX JUST A LITTLE BIT! PLEEEEAAASE. Much love <3 Feloirus (talk) 21:12, May 13, 2017 (UTC) ---- Alright. We'll discuss the idea of customizable rows on the infoboxes. It may happen, eventually, but we did do away with that during the process of upgrading them to conform with Wikia's new system, which encouraged wikis to move away from limitless rows in infoboxes. Zan has looked at the image width and it was set at 270x270. It's been expanded to 300x300, which should give you that smidge more of room that you want. 300 pixels is the standard for mobile, which more and more users are browsing Wikia on, so we'd like to keep it as close to that as possible. RiaSunhammer (talk) 01:03, May 15, 2017 (UTC) ----